Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60027. Bethel Church in Redding, California has been under sustained public scrutiny for several years now, and the questions have grown sharper rather than quieter. In January 2026 the apologist Mike Winger published a lengthy investigation setting out evidence that Shawn Bolz, a prominent figure closely associated with the movement, had fabricated prophetic words,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60026. Few questions divide thoughtful believers as quickly as this one, because modern worship music from Bethel, Elevation and Hillsong is everywhere. Their songs fill hymn projectors, playlists and youth events across the English speaking church, and a good many of them are genuinely singable, warm and biblically shaped in their language. I have…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60024. The New Testament assumes that false teachers will come. Jesus warned about them, Paul warned the Ephesian elders that they would arise from among their own number, and Peter, John and Jude each devote substantial space to the problem. The question is never whether they exist. It is how ordinary believers, without a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60018. Ask ten people what makes a group a cult and you will get ten answers, most of them about atmosphere rather than substance. It is small. It is intense. It is odd. It made my cousin move to Wales. Used that loosely the word becomes a way of saying that I find a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 9095. Whenever church size comes up in conversation, somebody always wants a number. Is a congregation of forty too small to be viable? Is a congregation of two thousand too large to be a church in any meaningful sense? I understand the instinct behind the question, but Scripture does not answer it the way…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09047. What makes a true church true? It is not a theoretical question. People move house and need to find somewhere to worship. Believers watch a congregation drift and wonder whether it has crossed a line. Somebody starts a fellowship in a front room and asks whether it counts. Behind all of those situations…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09030. Recognising an unhealthy church is harder than it sounds, because the warning signs rarely arrive labelled. They arrive as enthusiasm, as loyalty, as a strong sense of mission. By the time people realise something has gone wrong, they have usually invested years and friendships in the place, and leaving feels like a betrayal….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 09029. Deciding whether to leave a church is one of the loneliest decisions a Christian makes, and it is usually made badly. People stay far too long in places that are damaging them, or they walk out over something that would have been settled by one honest conversation. Both mistakes hurt, and both are…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12. False doctrine spreads like gangrene. That is not my phrase but Paul’s, and it is one of the most arresting medical images in all his letters. Writing to Timothy about a pair of false teachers, he warns that ‘their talk will spread like gangrene’ (2 Timothy 2:17). It is a deliberately ugly comparison,…